She's crafty.....and she's just my style

Okay, so here's your FYI, no knitting pictures contained within:

So last night I came home to the first of three boxes to be delivered by Amazon. This is a good thing and an oh so bad thing. The good part is that it's always fun to open boxes of things you ordered, especially when they surprise you and come earlier than you expected. It's not so good when you have been using the fact that the boxes are not yet there as the excuse to not finish the craft that you're making as a gift. You know, the one that should have been done a month ago when you first bought the ingredients. The one that if it had been done, could have been wrapped and packed with the other things that came in the amazon order - the package that should have been shipped off last week. Okay, so I have a little problem with getting boxes, and myself for that matter, out of the house on time. So this thing is gonna' be a little late. The good news is that the longest and most difficult part of this project is done. See these? These are the backings to the picture projects I'm making. They are for my sisters. They are ultra girly, and I love it. I want for my two little ladies to never grow up.
These are the backs of picture frames each with a piece of scrapbook paper glued and then a piece of frosted paper glued onto them. The first step went really well. I use, and love, modge podge for all my gluing needs. It's great stuff. The first paper went on smoothly. Then I tried to do the second layer. I'm not sure what happened, whether it was the amount of glue, the type of glue, or the fussy paper, but it bubbled and wrinkled like crazy. You can really see it on the one on the left because the pattern on that frosted paper isn't so obvious. I was really hearbroken. I felt so stupid for not making a tester peice or something first - but I didn't really buy any extra paper because I didn't think I would have any problems. At least when I checked them this morning, the bubbling wasn't nearly as gross as it was last night. I guess the glue dried and it relaxed a little. Thankfully.
So here is roughly what they'll look like finished. It occurs to me now that the letters are backwards, as in the "R" goes in the left one and vice versa, but it's no biggie, they're not glued or anything. The letters still need to be painted and decorated. Somewhere in my disaster of a house there are cute little pink and purple flowery details with pearls in the center. At least I think there are. At this point I'm not entirely sure if I bought those little things at Joanns or not. I have to go there today to buy paint for the letters (not that I have any clue what color to paint them), and wood glue, and perhaps some more little details, because it is likely that I will never ever find them - unless I purchase new ones. You know how that is.
So this is what I did with most of my knitting time last night. You will be proud to hear that I did an extra three rows above the mandatory four that are required to get this done somewhere near d-day. My hands are, however, killing me. Things are starting to pop and fizz when I'm working on this project. I'm not sure if it's because insist on knitting so tight with a yarn that's not really interested, or if it's the weight of it, or the weight of the needles. It could be the fact that one row contains 140 stitches, thus I did 980 stitches in less than two hours last night. That might have something to do with it. Also, the yarn twisting for the intarsia isn't helping either. But at least the project is moving. I see on my list that I need to do 2 more tiny sweaters to finish those up so maybe I'll do one of those tonight instead. They can be rough on the hands, but in a different way. At this point, that's a good thing. I'll take what I can get.
The last issue I have is with the holiday wreaths I'm trying to make. They are just not working the way I want them to. The first one was pathetically small, so I decided to make a larger one. I did thirty stitches five rows in pattern (k1 k1tbl all rows), but it doesn't really seem interested in twisting. I don't really get it. I'm pretty close to giving up on this sucker. The only solution I can think of is to stitch it together lengthwise inside out and then right side it and tie the ends together. Then it would be a tube and stay put. Frankly, I just don't know if this is going to get done for this year or not. I'm a little busy, but any suggestions you have to make this damn thing work are welcome. =)